Thanks to Internet, I get to watch American cartoons these days.
I watch cartoons simply to learn foreign cultures and English.
Well, anyway,I’ve watched “The Simpsons” and “Family Guy”. Honestly, they’ve disgusted me and I’ve come to wonder what pepole really think of the cartoons.
Or maybe smart people like you guys here don’t even watch cartoons? 
The Simpsons is unbridled hilarity for me. By some consensus, I’m a smart person. According to the minority, I’m an idiot. Family Guy is in the long American tradition of spoof comedy, and also makes me laugh.
More questions…
What do you think of the violent scenes in the cartoons?
Do many American people watch the cartoons?
Senses of humor differ from culture to culture and when I first watched the cartoons, I was simply shocked especially by all those violent scenes and the vivid descriptions. I also noticed that the cartoons are pretty conservative.
life get’s boring when you are always wondering what is socially ok, right etc etc.
Cartoons like the simpsons, are not intended for young children, they are intended for teenagers and adults to let loose, and relax and just laugh.
Being tight about everything all the time is almost like a mental oppression that you place on yourself.
Skeptical people can say that but the media can easily manipulate people so I would say we need to be always careful.
Ah! I thought The Simpsons was targeted at children.
I guess the ‘conservative’ part must be lost in translation. Like anything else, both cartoons have a mixture of liberal and conservative views (I haven’t met anyone who is purely and entirely aligned with one pole or the other), and with that, it is worth noting how conservative America is as a nation. A mixture of liberal and conservative views expressed by someone from a conservative country will appear quite conservative to someone from a liberal country and vice-versa.
As for the violence – Americans have an almost limitless taste for violence and are pretty much immune to it. Nudity, on the other hand, is incredibly taboo. Family Guy occasionally goes over the top with its violence, but it is a spoof show, it is supposed to be over-the-top in everyway.
“Hey, Louis! It’s the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who’s afraid of change!”
I think that it is obvious that violence in the media breeds violence in society at large. What are we now, 40 years since the Hays Code (the Production Code governing the making of films in the US) was abandoned and institutional censorship in the US film industry was more or less ended? I think it’s 40 years. Regardless, to me it is apparent that our societies as a whole have got more violent and we’ve become more, not less, prepared to accept casual violence as part of society. I don’t know if the same thing is true of Japan, though from what little I’ve heard you have less violent crime and a much more effective police force.
I think so, yes. I’ve met very few people either online or in real life who haven’t watched The Simpsons. I can only assume that the same in true of Americans.
‘Conservative’ in what regard?
Sense of humour is, as in all communicative situations, a matter of entropy and redundancy, between one’s expectations and the delivered result. This isn’t entirely dependent on culture, the complex mesh of semiotic preferences (linguistic, visual and so on) that constitutes an ‘individual’s taste’ is in part cultural but is also affected by biology among other things.
The Simpsons is incredibly popular in Australia, as is Futurama and Family Guy.
Is the Simpsons notably violent? Itchy and Scratchy yeah…but I’ve never really noticed much else, apart from Homer strangling Bart. I must have become completely inured to TV violence.
It parodies American culture but with a kind of affection. Condemnation with approbation…a love/hate relationship.
It’s funny, one of the questions I got asked most while living in Germany was whether we have the Simpsons in America. Since it is so satirical of the American culture and way of life, and the Germans assume all Americans are super-patriots (which isn’t helped by the fact that the Republicans in Germany are a radical right/neo-nazi party – many people assume that the two parties are linked), so how could a program like that come from America?
I thought it was amusing.
You used to live in Germany? Cool. Where?